David Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’ Gets a New Sequel in Comic Book Form

This week in sequels you weren’t aware that you wanted, comic book imprint IDW Publishing is releasing ‘The Fly: Outbreak,’ a follow-up to David Cronenberg’s 1986 film—which was based on a 1957 short story of the same name, which was also made into a film in 1958. A sequel to Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’ was released in 1989 without the involvement of the director, and it doesn’t appear that he had much—if anything—to do with this new comic book sequel, either.

THR reports that IDW Publishing is releasing ‘The Fly: Outbreak’ in March 2015. The story was written by Brandon Seifert, who also worked on the ‘Hellraiser’ comics, with artwork by artist menton3. The new story follows the “almost-human” son of Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle, who tries to continue pursuing his father’s work with telepod technology. As you might expect, the results aren’t great.

Seifert explained why he wanted to explore this particular narrative, which apparently involves advances in GMO technology—the same technology that’s used to modify crops and livestock, which actually sounds like it might be kind of interesting:

‘In the last 20 years or so, with all the advances in Genetically Modified Organisms, [Cronenberg’s original 1986 movie] has taken on a lot of meaning it didn’t originally have,’ Seifert said in a statement accompanying the announcement, adding that ‘it’s really exciting to explore those elements in this mini-series.’

The 1989 film sequel was made by Chris Walas, who provided the special effects for Cronenberg’s film, and went on to win an Academy Award for his work. Over the years, there have been attempts to make another sequel, with director Renny Harlin abandoning a concept called ‘Flies.’ Geena Davis, who was married to Harlin at the time, was set to reprise her role in that aborted project. Cronenberg himself has also toyed with the idea of a sequel to his own film, and even wrote a script for Fox after discovering they were considering a remake. His sequel never progressed beyond the script stage, with Cronenberg explaining that there were budgetary issues and that his script was “a little too radical” for Fox.